In the 16th century the amalgamation method with mercury was developed in Pachuca, to extract silver from minerals. In later centuries the preferred method to process the common ores, was the patio method system. From 1846, the so-called refractory or rebellious metals were processed by Born or barrels method and was gradually increasing the percentage of ore processed by this system. At the end of that century, the continuous method of pans used was an adaptation of variants originated in United States. The mechanization of the patio, applied from 1902 to 1906, was the last effort to keep alive the amalgamation. The new method of cyanidation applied in Pachuca from 1903, was a significant benefit improvement. It was based on the solubility of gold and silver by compounds such as sodium or potassium cyanide, observed since 1840. The patent for an industrial method using cyanide was obtained in 1886, by J. S. MacArthur, R. W. Forrest and G. Morton. The first applications to gold-rich minerals were a success. The advantages of cyanidation were: quickly process, better recovery of values, higher capacity for processing all types of minerals and the avoidance of a dangerous heavy metal handling. Implementation of this method for silver minerals was achieved in Mexico between 1903 and 1904. In Pachuca, the establishment of the cyanidation required local understanding of specialized knowledge to achieve the best results. It used high agitation tanks initially developed in New Zealand that improved locally would be known generically as Pachuca tanks. Thus, in the study period, the latest industrial applications, the amalgamation and the cyanidation with two variants: the agitation-decantation tanks and the Pachuca tanks coexisted in the region. In the cyanidation, changes were made to the procedure for precipitating the values; the procedure changed from zinc chip boxes to the dust of the same metal used in the Merrill-Crowe process .High performance equipment such as crushers, mills and conveyors, were applied in the milling, these changes in addition to the speed of the new method, allowed for the processing of much more ore tonnages than ever before.